Hertfordshire Landscape Character Area Statements St Albans District This document collates all the district-scale Landscape Character Area Statements that apply to the St Albans District. The statements were produced as part of the "Hertfordshire Landscape Character Assessment" undertaken between 2000 & 2005. The full collation of published local authority landscape character statements in Hertfordshire can be found on Hertfordshire County Councils website: http://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/leisculture/heritage1/landscape/hlca/lcacoll/ Landscape Character Area Statements: Introduction to Landscape Character Statements Area 009 - Bedmond Plateau Area 010 - St Stephen's Plateau Area 017 - Ver Colne River Valley Area 018 - Bricket Wood Area 019 - Vale of St Albans Area 021 - High Canons Valleys & Ridges Area 028 - North Mymms Park & Redwell Woods Area 030 - Colney Heath Farmland Area 031 - De Havilland Plain (no longer representative) Area 032 - Symonshyde Ridge Area 033 - Upper Lea Valley Area 034 - Blackmore End Plateau Area 035 - Ayot St Peter Wooded Upland Area 094 - Buncefield Plateau Area 095 - Revel End Plateau Area 096 - Upper Ver valley Area 097 - Gorhambury Estate Area 098 - Verulamium Area 099 - Rothamsted Plateau & Kinsbourne Green Area 100 - Harpenden Common Area 101 - Childwick Plateau Area 102 - Ayres End Valleys & Ridges Area 103 - Nomansland Common Area 104 - Thrales End Plateau Area 200 - Peters Green Plateau (NHDC) Area 201 - Kimpton and Whiteway Bottom (NHDC) 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background In February 2000 Hertfordshire County Council commissioned The Landscape Partnership to undertake the preparation of a 'local authority scale' landscape character assessment and evaluation of the southern part of the county in accordance with the most current version of national guidance, with stakeholder input, and co-ordinated with existing landscape characterisations. The characterisation work was to enable a definitive classification of all landscape types and boundaries encountered to be made, for the purposes of • advising on development control and policy development for future development plans, and • providing a framework for other landscape planning, regulation, conservation and management activities in the county. In 2001 an extension to the above Landscape Character Assessment was carried out to give full coverage within St. Albans District. In February 2002 a further extension was agreed to provide complete coverage of Dacorum District, which • Figure 01 previously had limited geographical representation. This The Character of England volume therefore comprises Part 2 of Volume 3 © Countryside i.e. the Landscape Character Assesssment Commission/ for Dacorum District. For the purpose of providing English Nature a complete district wide assessment a number of the character descriptions from the previous studies are also included within this document. 1.2 Context The process of landscape characterisation and assessment has been spearheaded in England by the work of the Countryside Agency (formerly Countryside Commission) and is currently enshrined as a major planning tool in PPG7. In tandem with English Nature, parallel approaches were formulated and tested during 1995-97 to derive, on the one hand, a series of Natural Area profiles for the whole of England and, on the other, the Countryside Character profiles. While the Natural Area profiles highlighted the distinctive ecology of rural areas, the Countryside Character profiles analysed landscape character in fairly broad-brush terms via the assessment of physical influences, historic and cultural influences, buildings and settlement, land cover and changes in the landscape. Through this process 120 Natural Areas and 181 character areas were formulated and a joint map published, called ‘The Character of England: landscape, wildlife and natural features’ (see Figure 01). This map defines the county of Hertfordshire as lying within six Character Areas: • Area 86 South Suffolk and North Essex Clayland • Area 87 East Anglian Chalk • Area 88 Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire Claylands • Area 110 Chilterns • Area 111 Northern Thames Basin • Area 115 Thames Valley Dacorum Landscape Character Assessment pg 1 1.0 INTRODUCTION The Hertfordshire Structure Plan Review adopted in April 1998 embraced the concept of landscape character assessment (see para 392 et seq.) and refers to Volume 1 of A Landscape Strategy for Hertfordshire, which was published as background information in 1998. This first document identifies six regions within Hertfordshire. The present document for Dacorum District (Volume 3 Part 2) falls within the following regions : • Region 1: The Northern Vale Salients • Region 2: The Chilterns These two regions also correspond to Areas 88 and 110 from the Character Map of England. • Figure 02 Landscape Regions of Hertfordshire © Hertfordshire County Council Region 1: The Northern Vale Salients. Region 4: The East Hertfordshire Plateau. A transition zone between the Chilterns scarp face and the (The South Suffolk and North Essex Clay Lands). adjacent open plains (Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire). Region 2: The Chilterns. Region 5: The Central River Valleys. A sub-section of the Northern Thames Basin. Region 3: The East Anglian Chalk (North Hertfordshire Ridge). Region 6: The South Hertfordshire Plateau. A sub-section of the Chilterns. A sub-section of the Northern Thames Basin. Within these broad categories there are physical and This study revisits the general landscape features of the cultural features that serve to distinguish sub-divisions county covered in the first volume of the Strategy before within each area. Some of these divisions are not before providing a detailed description, assessment and immediately obvious and require analysis of the basic evaluation of each Landscape Character Area covered by landscape components and their relationship to each other. the scope of this study. A single character area may contain different landscape types that combine to give it a unique character. Recent change within a landscape area may suggest a difference of character that is in fact superficial. Logical and consistent observation and analysis was therefore used to derive 30 Landscape Character Areas, as described in this report. Each character area is distinct. One of the intentions of this study is to highlight, conserve and reinforce this distinctiveness. pg 2 Dacorum Landscape Character Assessment 2.0 GENERAL LANDSCAPE FEATURES OF HERTFORDSHIRE 2.1 PHYSICAL INFLUENCES Today the soils within the county are of two kinds: alkaline 2.1.1 Geology and Soils or neutral chalky soil (boulder clay) in the north and east of Hertfordshire is not old in geological terms. Its base stratum the county; and more or less acid leached soils over the is heavy blue-grey gault clay, which forms an impermeable centre and west of the county. These two soil types, which layer beneath the chalk, whose outward expression is best divide the county very roughly along a north-west/south- seen in the Chilterns, in the north west of the county. Over east line between Stevenage/Hitchin and Ware/Hoddesdon, the chalk a thin layer of clays, sands and pebbles - the have had a defining impact on vegetation, agriculture and Reading Beds - was then deposited. In the south-eastern development - that is, on fundamental aspects of the part of the county (Rickmansworth to Bishop's Stortford) a landscape character of the county. The light chalky soils of layer of thick London clay was later laid down. Still later the north west were easily cultivated, if not particularly (about 200,000 years ago during the last Ice Age) glaciers fertile, and were possibly never heavily wooded in any moved southwards over the chalk, depositing 'drift' - layers event. Cultivation of the boulder clay seems to have been of broken rock from the areas further north over which the intense in the early medieval period, especially on sloping glacier had passed, which were then left behind as it land where drainage could be more easily achieved. melted. This is the chalky boulder clay found in the north- eastern part of the county. In the west of the county, where On the heavy, poorly-drained London clay, south east of a there were no glaciers, a natural weathering process line drawn roughly between Rickmansworth and Hertford, produced the 'clay-with-flints' - a clay deposit containing via Hatfield, cultivation proved very difficult, so it was long frost-shattered flints and pebbles from the Reading Beds. left to support oak and hornbeam forest and pasture. There Glaciation had one other significant impact on the county's is very little arable farming and, until comparatively geology - the proto-Thames. During the last Ice Age what recently, little settlement. North and west of this area lie the is now the Vale of St Albans was the valley of a much larger Lea and Colne gravel regions. The river diversion mentioned Thames, with lakes at Wheathampstead and St Albans. above left rich gravel deposits in the old Thames valley, Eventually the Thames cut itself a new valley further south which provided better-drained, more accessible routes and, when the ice melted, the earlier valley formed the Lea through the county than the forested clays. Settlements and Colne rivers. grew up in these valleys, and most of the modern towns in Hertfordshire are on these gravels. The river valleys are therefore the areas most heavily affected by human interference, settlement throughout the centuries and, more